Ultra Low-Power Microserver to Tackle Big Bang Program’s Energy Needs

Image courtesy of IBM.

To tackle the ultimate big data project, we’re going small. Here at IBM Research in Zurich, we’re unveiling a hyper-efficient, ultra-low power microserver that could reshape how we think about computing. Rather than the model of the past 35 years of moving data to a processor, we’ve developed a system that brings the two together.

It’s a breakthrough innovation for one of the most ambitious science projects ever: the Square Kilometre Array, or SKA. Backed by an international consortium, SKA will be the world’s largest, most powerful radio telescope when it’s completed in 2024, each day gathering an unprecedented 14 exabytes of data and storing about one petabyte to enable scientists to better understand the Big Bang and evolution of the universe.

We developed the microserver to potentially help tackle SKA’s demanding power, processing, and data movement issues, but this datacenter in a box is also a huge step toward tech’s future. It’s a recognition that, in the era of massive amounts of data, computing isn’t our biggest challenge. It’s efficiently and effectively moving around and storing all the data we’re creating. The SKA system is just the forerunner of where we’re heading. Today’s servers use energy and shuttle data around. They don’t map to a future where big data processing won’t just be the province of a certain companies, it will be in wide demand as cloud processing goes mainstream and is used by consumers like you and me.

Because the cost of doing a calculation is getting so low, it’s almost equal to the cost of sending the data to where it’s calculated. We have to think of a future where the cost of doing the computation is less and maybe even significantly less than the cost of storing the data that’s involved in this calculation.

Our innovation was to strip down the traditional server, focusing just on memory and the processor and, of course, the way to get data in and out with high-speed Internet interfaces. The microserver had to be highly efficient and we had to be able to build it with commodity parts and run server-class operating systems and applications.

After two years of work we’ve made significant progress. Our new 64-bit microserver, which is about the size of a smartphone at 13 cm by 5 cm, is built with a 4-core Freescale processor chip and power convertor on one side and 16 gigabytes of memory on the other, though we’re already working to ramp memory up to 48 gigabytes and the processor to a 12-core version. To ratchet down energy consumption, our microservers are cooled by water using a system we developed in 2010 for supercomputers and cloud datacenters. A specially designed copper plate mounted to the server and connected directly to the processor does double duty, cooling the card by conducting heat away, but also bringing electrical power to it.

The result is the potential for a big cluster in a small form factor. We’re confident we can fit 128 of these microservers within a standard 2U 19 inch rack unit. They spit out 10 kilowatts, underscoring how crucial the water-cooling system is). In a stacked rack, we could have 16 of those individual units, equaling 2,048 microservers and 24’576 cores.

We’re developing this technology for evaluation by SKA, with its unique demands of its own. To build the massive telescope, the consortium of 10 nations is setting up 3,000 dishes with millions of antennas spread across wide swaths of southern Africa and western Australia. Because the telescope is to be made from so many individual antennas sprinkled across thousands of miles of land and such a large volume of data is being gathered, a novel low-cost and energy efficient computing system must be developed to manage the process of gathering, storing, and analyzing data from end to end. Our work at IBM is part of a five-year collaboration called DOME that we and the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy(ASTRON) created to design an IT system that could be used for managing the data that the SKA produces.

When it comes to SKA’s deployment of the microserver, it’s possible the system designers will decide to perform a ﬁrst round of data ﬁltering or analysis close to the antennas, or even on them. Another possibility is that the SKA organization will want to use the microserver within datacenters. We’re also working to ruggedize the microserver. Computers aren’t typically designed to operate in the middle of the Karoo Desert, which can reach as high as 50 °C (122 °F). Scientists from South Africa will work on making the microservers “desert proof” to handle the extreme conditions.

But the potential is clear, particularly with cloud computing and with the race on to develop systems that can provide a lot of memory and computing in a small, efficient form factor. We think that the density factor and the water cooling factor that we achieved is a game changer for many applications spanning any industry.

Fundamentally, the notion we go back to is that when you have lots of data and cheap computing, you don’t have to have one place where you’re computing, or lots of places where you store the data. You can combine data and computing and save energy in the process. This is a different paradigm that the one we’ve lived with since the invention of the PC. Before desktop computing, the data was in the same glass house that did the processing. Then the PC unleashed that data. But now, we need to fundamentally rethink this approach and bring the two back together. We’re helping propel the industry in that direction.

IBM and ASTRON scientists will unveil the first prototype of the 64-bit microserver live on 3 July at 8 a.m. EST. Visitwww.bit.ly/domemicrosever for details.

Ton Engbersen, Ph.D., is the Scientific Director of the ASTRON & IBM Center for Exascale Technology in conjunction with the DOME project.

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